Oatmeal
Oatmeal, or '/oat/', (or probably real name is Oatchan when it moved to Chat (/chat/)) is a SFW random board that was often regarded the most iconic, and initially garnered popularity on Ponychan, then a chunk of its former regulars found MLPchan to be their preferred environment and moved. It was one of Ponychan's largest and most popular boards, but now bears more-or-less average activity rates. At the time of what was considered its "Golden Age", it became the home of many of the site's in-jokes, memes, news outlets such as The Daily Oat, which many of them in its first year were a large staple associated with the fandom as a whole, prior to its controversial "pony-related" crackdown that was eventually lifted on both Ponychan and MLPchan in late June 2013. History on Ponychan The term 'Oatmeal' originates from the show, as Pinkie Pie says "Oatmeal? Are you crazy?!". Oatmeal is heavily accociated with 'crazy' or 'insane' in the fandom, therefore the 'random' board was named 'Oatmeal'. For over two years on Ponychan, it was the "random pony-related" board, where most of the community's silliness springs from. Threads there are commonly subjected to derailment, often by Gary Oak or Spiderman. It was once known as /pony/, much as the current /show/ (formerly known as /pony/) was once known as /ep/. Pony-Related Randomness Controversy There has been much controversy and drama over whether or not /oat/ threads were pony-related. Beginning on Sunday, July 3 and continuing into the 4th, !!RainbowDash and some of the other mods began moving various threads that were deemed non-pony related to /chat/, much to the dismay of several disgruntled g/oat/s and /chat/ users. The rules, at the time, technically say that /oat/ is for pony-related randomness only. However, an argument against the thread movings is that /oat/ has become a community of its own, and that all the threads in there were related to the community and divides of such should be bounded where it comes naturally. Another argument against the movings is that /chat/ is a more serious board, and that anything "random" or silly in nature should remain in /oat/. The rhythms of the two boards, whatever the case, were very different and were affected by the thread movings. There was talk of making /oat/ a truly random board, but in the end a new board called /dis/ was created for serious, non-pony discussion and /chat/ became the moderately serious non-pony random board. "Oatmeal" to "Pony General" On January 11, 2012, the moving of threads to /chat/, /rp/, etc. has once again begun. Threads that would've previously been allowed and welcomed in /oat/ are now often quickly moved to the officially correct board, where they tend to die from disinterest. Users are often banned for roleplaying derails, which were commonplace mere months ago. The mod team continued to insist the intended purpose of /oat/ is "pony-related randomness", however what exactly "pony-related randomness" is is both a tough and controversial question to answer. The only threads that seem to be fairly safe from movement are *"Rolling" threads (eg. "Roll to see which pony you're stuck having a sleepover with") *Appreciation threads (eg. "Luna appreciation thread", where people would post images of Luna and discuss the character) *Thread OPs with nonsensical statements, followed by several more posts of nonsensical statements. These often derail into /oat/ RP. *Thread OPs with statements that make quite a bit of sense. These often suffer the same fate as the ones with the nonsensical statements. It was uncertain which direction /oat/ would have gone at the time, but then, things seem volatile at best, and could have only hoped for brighter days in the future. Pony General On May 7, 2012, a mudfest hit /oat/ when the board had its name changed to 'Pony General'. /oat/ is still the same, but the crackdowns on random threads have increased even more. Some people are still angry to the point of making pictures, like the one to the right. The drama lasted most of the night, after which things calmed down and people went back to normal. After the hiatus had already passed and we were already halfway through season 3, both mods and users were shocked to see that was redeeming its traffic as expected. A /chat/ merger was thrown into debate, but talks were abandoned from the lack of support. MLPchan's /oat/ Out of disdain from Ponychan's /oat/ moderation that greatly limited the board's content, many users sought for a new /oat/ board outside its site. Many users later found themselves more comfortable on MLPchan's equivalent board. MLPchan is more lenient on their take on /oat/ for largely two reasons - allowing posts to go borderline from mature content, and allowing roleplay. Even Anonthony, the admin of the site is known for his shenanigans onboard /oat/. The center of all /oat/ related roleplay that would be outside of /rp/ and Open Equestria is the Donut Bar. Many of MLPchan's /oat/ regulars had worked on a weekly podcast they called "MLPC Radio", which was rebranded to give itself a wider topic, renamed "Pregnant Stallion Radio". The origin to the podcast went about similar to [[[[The Daily Oat]]]]. It was initially endorsed by the site, then reached out of its home site. However, just like Ponychan's oat prior to the board list revision, if it isn't pony related enough, it would be moved to /chat/. Pony-Related Random to fully Random At the decline of activity of both site's /oat/ boards throughout Season 3 hiatus, the merger discussion was provoked on MLPchan and was revisited on Ponychan. As of late June 2013, both chans had made the decisions to remove the limitations of /oat/ and make it a full-ongoing random board. Many people rejoiced to the changes, including one enthusiastic /oat/er. Though /oat/ and /chat/ were remained two individual boards on Ponychan by popular vote, the staff of MLPchan proceeded the merging of them along with /chat/'s serials. Ponychan's /oat/ currently allows SFW content of any kind, all serials aside. MLPchan's /oat/ allows SFW and some borderline content of any kind, and serials reside here, though often buried after bump limit. The front page until January 2014 had a serial directory containing most of the sites current serials that was updated by the mods manually, but the introduction of the search box resulted in its removal. Board OC's For a while, Ponychan's /oat/ board had an OC that was often considered the board's mascot pony, which was a baby-blue maned, beige coat pony they called Oatie. However, the concept of this OC is largely abandoned today. As MLPchan's /oat/ board increased in popularity, the posters there found it necessary to embrace a mascot OC of their own. Over the Fall 2012, the candy-pink, curly brown-haired pony with a fox-like tail by the name "Sugar Bumpkin" was created and popularized with the individual inputs of /oat/'s members. In 2016, The Daily Oat was created. Oatmeal and The Daily Oat does not support NSFW pictures, only pony pics! Category:Boards Category:Ponychan